Page 4 of Match My Alpha
The phone buzzes again. I don't look.
I press my face into the pillow beside mine—the empty one, the one that's always cold—and close my eyes.
Callum
My back aches. Some probie set the bench press too high yesterday, and my pride was too stupid to back down. Now I'm paying for it. I toss the half-eaten protein bar Marco left on the engine bay counter and wipe down the stainless steel. It's a habit. If I don't do it, nobody does. I check the clock. Two hours left on a twenty-four-hour shift that feels like it's been dragging on for a week. We haven't had a call since a minor kitchen fire on Broad Street this afternoon, and the quiet is making everyone restless. Me included.
"Hayes, get in here. You gotta see this profile," Marco yells from the break room.
Jen laughs, and I wander in because it's not like I've got anything better to do. Marco has KnotMe open on his phone, angled so Jen and Torres can see. He's swiping through profiles like it's a spectator sport. I grab a mug and pour some coffee from the pot. It's burnt. It's always burnt. I drop into the chair at the end of the table, rolling my stiff shoulders.
"What about you, Hayes?" Marco turns the phone toward me. "You still got the app from when we made you download it?"
"It's on my phone somewhere," I mutter, taking a sip of the motor oil coffee.
"Somewhere," Jen repeats with a smirk. "You never even opened it, did you?"
"I opened it. Wasn't really my thing."
"His thing is going home and talking to his plants," Marco teases.
"My plants are better company than you."
"Your plants can't sit on your—"
"Finish that sentence and I'm putting you on latrine duty for a month."
Marco holds his hands up in surrender, grinning. Jen snorts into her coffee. I let out a low chuckle. It's funny mostly because it's true. I go home to my plants. I water them, make sure they get enough light, eat whatever, and go to bed. It works. It's simple.
Torres gets into a debate with Marco about some omega's bio, and I tune them out. I finish my coffee, rinse the mug out in the sink, and head for the bunks. I pass the supply closet on the way and notice someone left the mop bucket out again. I dump the dirty water, rinse it, and rack it. It takes thirty seconds.
The bunk room is empty and dim, lit only by the amber glow of the emergency exit sign. I sit on the edge of my bunk and yank my boots off, groaning as the pressure releases. I grab my phone out of my locker, checking to see if Ava texted. She's been on my ass about dinner this Friday like it's a royal wedding and not just her, me, and her friends eating her dry chicken.
Nothing from Ava. Just a weather alert and an email from the union. And the KnotMe icon, sitting right there on my home screen.
I don't even know why I open it. Boredom, probably. I downloaded it on a dare from Marco weeks ago, swiped through a few profiles, and closed it. Nothing caught my eye.
I start scrolling now. Gym selfie. Another gym selfie. A cute omega with a bio that's way too long for me to read right now.
Then my thumb freezes.
The photo is a selfie taken in the warm glow of a bedside lamp. The omega in the picture has a soft, oversized sweater half-pulled over his head, the fabric bunched up around his shoulders. It exposes a strip of bare stomach and the waistband of his boxers. His stomach is soft—not flat, just warm and huggable. He has dark curls falling into his face. And his skin, a warm medium-brown...
Wait. Something about him is familiar…
My gut goes completely still. I know the exact shade of that skin. I've stared at it across dinner tables and in my sister's kitchen. My eyes drag up to his shoulder where the sweater has slipped off, and there it is. A small brown birthmark, right below his collarbone. I've only seen it once. Last summer, at a cookout. He reached up to hang some lights, his tank top slipped, and I stood there holding a pair of barbecue tongs like a fucking idiot for six full seconds, staring at that exact spot, imagining exactly where my teeth would go.
It's Milo.
Milo Reyes. Ava's best friend. The sweet omega who shows up at every dinner with homemade cookies and apologizes when someone else bumps into him. The one I've been deliberately forcing myself not to think about since the day she introduced us.
And he's on KnotMe. In his underwear. With his soft belly out and a bio that—
I read the bio.
Heat coils low and heavy in my gut. I have to shift on the mattress because my cock is suddenly, aggressively hard. Milo—sweet, shy, vanilla Milo—wrote that. Or at least approved it.
I press the heel of my palm against my crotch through my uniform pants. It doesn't help. It just makes the image sharper. Milo's soft belly under my hand. Milo whimpering. That birthmark under my mouth.
